


Music For Ghosts

by bellepeppertronix



Category: Overwatch (Video Game)
Genre: Hurt/Comfort, Insomnia, Other, Team as Family, ratings will change with subsequent chapters, relationships will change with subsequent updates
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2017-03-19
Updated: 2017-07-12
Packaged: 2018-10-07 18:59:59
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 4
Words: 15,824
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10367265
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/bellepeppertronix/pseuds/bellepeppertronix
Summary: Lucio would know a Vishkar tech transport convoy even in mid-afternoon Rio de Janeiro traffic, though, after what he’d seen: and he knew the bland, placid warehouse front was probably hiding all kinds of illicit tech, the kind of shit it was somehow legal to have only if you were a corporate juggernaut for whom laws and customs rules were just watery suggestions.It took him two more days after the first two weeks to assemble the gear he needed--janitor disguise, camera circuit jammer, explosives. Then one warm, quiet night, he put on his running shoes, and when he passed through the main room and ran into Lena and McCree, he told them he was going for a run.~Lucio is a freedom fighter. He runs across all kinds of people in his line of work.





	1. Chapter 1

The team was currently staying in a safehouse in New Mexico. Winston had put them all on a kind of enforced ‘vacation’ while he and Morrison tried to cobble together more resources for another strike. Morrison kept talking about a gang called Los Muertos--small-time thieves trying to make the jump into the big game by running guns. Morrison said he was certain that if they followed the trail from Los Muertos to their suppliers, they’d find something important.

The rest of the team was hunkered down still gathering intel, but while they waited, Lucio been doing some gathering, himself.   
He’d been scoping this place out for two weeks, just planning.   
Unlabeled white shipping trucks going in and out of a plain building, with nothing but a modest Vishkar corporation logo in the window, meant something was up. 

Lucio would know a Vishkar tech transport convoy even in mid-afternoon Rio de Janeiro traffic, though, after what he’d seen: and he knew the bland, placid warehouse front was probably hiding all kinds of illicit tech, the kind of shit it was somehow legal to have only if you were a corporate juggernaut for whom laws and customs rules were just watery suggestions.   
It took him two more days after the first two weeks to assemble the gear he needed--janitor disguise, camera circuit jammer, explosives. Then one warm, quiet night, he put on his running shoes, and when he passed through the main room and ran into Lena and McCree, he told them he was going for a run. They were sitting together on the safehouse’s worn couch, watching old cartoons on the the ancient TV, and they both just smiled and waved.

“You goin’ out?” McCree said. “You best be careful out there! There’s coyotes ‘bout as big as you runnin’ around hungry, this time of night,”  
Lena giggled but elbowed him in the side. “Like he couldn’t outrun them!”  
McCree grinned, wobbling exaggeratedly in his seat, said, “I reckon that’s true.”  
“That IS true! Have a good time, love!”  
“Aww, thanks! Oh, and you guys don’t have to wait up or nothin’,” Lucio said. “I feel like takin’ a long one, tonight. Don’t worry, I’ll be back by sun-up, though.” He grinned.  
McCree hummed in amusement. “You better hope Morrison doesn’t get the idea in his head to have us run through any drills or tests tomorrow,” he said.

Lucio had waved it off, laughing. “Ahh, it’ll be fine. He’s too busy to want to do any training anyway!”

~

That was what he was thinking about when the vault doors slammed shut.   
Lucio had enough time to whirl around and see the hydraulic locks engage, a soft hissing sound as the entire area began to pressurize.  
He lunged back at the doors, his fingers scrambling uselessly at the door’s keypad and the burner phone he’d connected to it, with his cracking programs on it. His phone’s screen flashed a connection error warning, and after a moment the door’s keypad turned a pleasant, neutral shade of blue. The Vishkar corporation logo appeared on it for a few seconds, and then it went glassy and black and blank again. He looked helplessly out through the reinforced aluminoglass panel of the room’s window, into the small hallway he’d recently left, where a second set of doors slid closed and sealed themselves the same way.

The room he was trapped in was a storage room, full of crates. He knew the stuff was more crowd-control tech, more sound cannons and cell phone signal disruptors. He’d heard stories about the kind of work Vishkar did in in the U.S., and while it wasnt the same as what they’d tried to do in Brazil, they did very brisk business with the American military and the police.  
He wasn’t surprised. Some things didn’t change no matter where you were.

He sighed, tamping down the budding nervousness inside himself. There was a way in; there was always a way back out. He disconnected his phone and slid it into the pocket on the janitor’s coverall he was wearing, stuck his hand into a different pocket and came back out with a tiny screwdriver set. He was setting about prying the panel loose from the wall when someone behind him cocked a gun.  
He froze, eyes going wide. 

In the split second it took him to snatch his amp gun and whip it around, he lunged out of the way. One blast from his gun was enough to knock the stranger back--then he saw who it WAS, and dove for cover.

Reaper, for a guy who dressed like death himself, made a lot of noise when he walked.  
Lucio wondered how much of it was for theatrics. He also how much of a charge it would take from his amp to knock the guy back again.  
He wondered if he’d actually done anything to him with the first shot.  
He heard the sound of boots on the concrete floor, jangling buckles, Reaper’s low rasp of a chuckle.   
When he finally spoke, Lucio could tell he was talking through a filter. “That wasn’t very civil or heroic. Want to try that again, face to face?”

Lucio was silent, adjusting his gear. He knew they’d have been too visible and would have jeopardized his mission more than helped, but he really wished he had his skates. Then, at least, he’d have an easier time evading the other man.   
Listening hard, he could tell Reaper was moving away, towards a tower of crates to his left. 

Lucio, crouched and on tiptoe, made his way around to the other side of the crates he was hiding behind, putting more space between himself and Reaper.  
Reaper kept talking.  
“You know, eventually I’m going to find you. Don’t you think it’d be a good idea for that to happen while I still have SOME patience left?”  
Lucio took another step around the side of a crate and sudenly Reaper was THERE, wisps of blood-reeking smoke raveling off the hem of his cape like he’d walked past a fire.   
He aimed one of his shotguns at Lucio almost lazily, gesturing with the gun for him to stand up.  
Lucio held his hands up, pursing his lips in frustration. 

“Now, just LOOK what we have here,” he said. “Isn’t it amazing, the people you run into when you’re breaking the law?”  
Lucio said nothing.  
“Did your team send you in here to scout out the area? Is your hulking armored behemoth waiting outside to try to crush the door to come rescue you?”  
Lucio was still silent, his eyes tracking the other man as he moved.

Reaper continued speaking, his voice holding an ugly grin. “No! That would be too EASY,” he sneered. “This is a solo mission. You must have come after the same thing I did...” he glanced over his shoulder carelessly, at the white and chrome roll-top crates, each one with the Vishkar logo emblazoned on their sides.   
“So the only remaining question is...whether you came to steal...or sabotage.”

The man moved with a kind of sly, ugly grace; Lucio kept thinking of skulking alligators in murky water or snakes moving through marshy grass. The hairs along the backs of his arms and the back of his neck stood on end.  
“What about you, man? Somethin’ tells me you weren’t on the security detail. How d’you think they’d treat YOU if they found you here, huh?” Lucio said, finally. 

His hand was sweating on the handle of his amp-gun, and he was half-tensed and ready to dash out of the way, should the man try anything. Part of him was surprised that Reaper hadn’t told him to drop the amp-gun; the other part was relieved an almost grateful.   
A quick blast at close enough range would buy him a few seconds to get to cover. There had to be another door somewhere, there had to be a hatch or something, some hiding place--then he could trip a security sensor, sic the Vishkar security pigs on Reaper, and sneak out in the gunfight that would definitely ensue. 

Reaper actually laughed. “How do you know I don’t have an extraction team waiting for me, or someone else covering me?”   
“Because if you did, your sniper would have blown my head off already,” Lucio said flatly. 

Reaper was still pacing back and forth in a straight line, just between him and the crates. The wicked metal points on his gauntlets caught the harsh white-blue light; his whole costume threw back glints and flashes from every metal facet and buckle.   
“Well, aren’t you clever,” Reaper said. “So, now you know I’m alone. Let me ask you something: do you feel any safer?” 

Lucio started to say that he knew for a fact he could die while on Vishkar’s property and they would make sure his body disappeared and no one ever found out what had happened to him, and he was prepared for that; instead, he bit his tongue and scowled slightly. Maybe, he thought, he could use this--if he could get the guy monologuing he could buy himself some time...

“I’d feel safe knowing they weren’t developing any more crowd-control tech,” Lucio said.   
“And so it comes out. You WERE coming to sabotage! Aren’t we just full of surprises,” Reaper said. Suddenly he stopped pacing, directly across from Lucio. “But you didn’t answer my question.”  
Just gotta play dumb, Lucio thought. Then, “What question?”  
Reaper laughed, shaking his head. “I don’t have all night.”  
“You think *I* do?”  
“Are you actually here alone?” Reaper snorted. “How brave. How STUPIDLY brave.”  
“YOU’RE here alone,” Lucio pointed out.   
“I am walking death,” Reaper said. “You’re a kid with a broken speaker he turned into a gun.”  
“Sure seems to work against YOU,” Lucio snapped. 

Reaper LAUGHED. “AND you have a mouth on you! Truly hilarious. As a matter of fact, I’d love to hear MORE...but as the case stands, you’re in my way.”  
“As the case stands, we’re both trapped, in case you didn’t notice.”  
“I’m sure you can arrange something. The door, now.” Reaper waved his gun in the direction of the door and Lucio glanced over his shoulder at it.   
Lucio bit his tongue nervously. “The door panel has an auto-shut down. It won’t even reactivate unless someone with approved fingerprints touches it.” 

Reaper sucked his teeth. “Oh, that IS a problem, isn’t it,” he said, his voice sarcastic and syrupy-sweet. “I think we both know how this goes,” Reaper said. He sounded almost bored. “Keep your hands up, move and I shoot you…” He finished the statement by making a round gesture in teh air with his free gun, shaking his head. Lucio couldn’t even see the other man’s eyes and he knew he was rolling them.   
Reaper stared long and hard at the door, so silent and still he seemed to barely be breathing; then, still silent, he stalked over to the door. Lucio saw him reach into one of the pouches and pull a small canister, which he stuck the end of into the lock panel’s chip slot. The canister projected a screen onto the door, but from the angle, Lucio couldn’t see what was on it. Reaper typed something, but nothing happened. The screen flashed red twice before turning red altogether.   
Reaper grunted softly, as if drawing a conclusion, an turned back to face Lucio.   
He considered the door again, hefting his other shotgun.   
“I’m telling you, man, don’t do it,” Lucio warned.

He took a step to the side, passing Lucio--one gun trained on him, still, and before Lucio could say anything, he was aiming at the door panel.  
Lucio dove behind the nearest crate the second he passed him, covering his head.

“Don’t shoot! The walls--” Lucio didn’t get to finish his statement before Reaper fired two shots. 

There was a bang and an electronic snapping, crackling noise, and Reaper staggered back a few paces, snarling in pain. He reeled away to lean against one of the crates, cluthcing his chest.  
Lucio noticed he wasn’t bleeding--blackish spots of coagulated blood had splattered on the ground, but none was running from the wounds across his torso.

“Vishkar sonic barriers. They run a constant current through the walls--if you touch ‘em and stand real still you can feel they’re vibrating. Don’t try to hit the walls, either, the force will knock you back and maybe even break your arms.”   
“...Would have been HELPFUL if you’d said something earlier,” Reaper hissed, striding over to Lucio and grabbing him by a handful of shirt.   
“Like you would have listened,” Lucio muttered.

Reaper shoved him away, grumbling under his breath. He turned and walked away himself. Lucio could see he was limping--he must have been hit somewhere important by the deflected bullets.  
He could feel his stomach twist inside himself. 

“There’s no other way out,” Lucio said, getting to his feet. “Why don’t you just do your ghost smoke thing and leave, huh?”  
“I don’t LEAVE without finishing JOBS,” Reaper growled. “Something you Overwatch hacks should try to learn.”  
“Oh, yeah, because taking examples from a mercenary who runs with a TERRORIST ORGANIZATION is something we should do,” Lucio said.   
“It’s almost comical that you think you know what you’re talking about,” Reaper said.  
“I knew enough to get in HERE without getting caught, didn’t I?” Lucio asked. 

He felt like maybe he was rising to the bait of a verbal trap, but felt like he was catching himself too late.  
Reaper was unnervingly, annoyingly good at getting under people’s skin.   
The other man Reaper looked at the door again, growling low in his throat.   
“Oh, yes. You knew well enough to get yourself locked in a sealed vault with a door that only opens from the outside, with a lock that only opens for people with the right set of fingerprints. OVerwatch must be desperate, if they’re taking recruits as green as you.”  
Instead of rising to the bait this time, though, Lucio was too busy watching blackish smudges beginning to darken the holes in the front of his vest and across his torso, in places that probably should have killed him, or at least laid him out.

“What’s the matter, no more smart remarks?” Reaper snapped.  
“You’re bleeding pretty bad, man,” Lucio said, instead.  
Reaper looked down at himself as if just noticing his--frankly rather grievous--wounds, and snorted. At its end the sound turned into a wet retch; Lucio flinched. 

“You don’t even know what a serious injury looks like. Now,” Reaper said, “I’m going to give you one last chance to open the door, before I MAKE you do it.”  
“I already told you, I can’t open it. You can threaten as much as yuo want, man, but it ain’t gonna make that any less true.”

~

“What would you do,” Lucio said, very carefullly, “If I said I could help you?”  
For a torturously long moment, the other man just stared ahead of himself, as if Lucio hadn’t spoken at all. He was starting to raise his hand to repeat himself when Reaper suddenly whipped his head around, turning in place like a jointed mannequin and stalking over to him, eating up the floor with his strides. Every step thudded and jangled with all the guns and gear he was carrying, and Lucio was really, really wishing his amp did more than sound damage. 

“What the FUCK makes YOU think YOU can help ME? HUH? YOU--YOU WANT TO SEE WHAT HAPPENED THE LAST TIME ONE OF YOU PRECIOUS OVERWATCH FUCKS TRIED TO ‘HELP ME’?”   
His voice had started off in its usual growl and rose until he was nearly screaming. He was standing close enough that Lucio could smell the leather of his coat, the pale, gray scent of ashes, and the wetter, redder smell of blood. 

He swallowed and didn’t flinch when the other man leaned into his space, still snarling.  
This subsided after a minute into labored breathing, hitching now and then. Reaper twisted away from him to pace alongside a wall, grunting in pain with every other step.

“No,” Lucio said, after awhile. Then, “I can help you, if you want. Look, it’s not--it’s not pills or gas or anything, okay? Don’t freak out.”  
“If you’re fucking with me,” Reaper said, calmly, “I’m going to shoot you.”  
Lucio fought the urge to roll his eyes. If HE wanted to, he thought, he could literally kill him with a shockwave. He had enough tact not to say that, however.   
“Okay, here it goes,” he said, holding up his amp.

He set it to a mid-frequency and let it do its thing for a few moments, knowing Reaper’s bullet wounds would be gone in about five minutes. He didn’t want to think about the logistics of the bullets migrating out of his body; normally the accelerated healing would cause the body to heal from the inside outwards, pushing out any foreign matter as it did, but in Reaper’s case, he couldn’t exactly ask the guy to strip down and lie there and wait for the slugs to pop back out.  
Reaper, though. 

He’d actually stopped his pacing, his posture rigid and his chin hooked low over his chest. He had one hand clenched on top of a crate as if to brace himself against it, the other hand clenching and unclenching on nothing.   
After a long moment he wrenched himself loose from this posture, turning away from Lucio and taking a few steps.   
Lucio edged up behind him carefully, still keeping his amp up.  
“What?” Reaper said, looking down at his arms. “What--” 

The bloodless, necrotic flesh was actually beginning to heal, plumping out again, until his hands looked like a live man’s hands, not a corpse’s.   
“What the...” Reaper was saying, his voice trailing off into barely-there sighs.  
Lucio smiled. His feeling of victory was short-lived, however.

In the next second, Reaper ripped off the sleeves of his coat, staring at his arms. But he was holding them away from his body as if they were covered in festering boils, though the brown skin was whole and unbroken.  
“What the hell did you DO to me?!” Reaper snarled, turning back to face him.  
“It’s my amp,” Lucio said. “See what I meant? Look, it emits low-level vibrations that help cells regrow faster and makes your heart beat faster. Better blood flow an’ all that. Pretty good, right?”

Reaper was silent, staring at his own intact arms. Then he strode closer to Lucio, laughing low and harsh in his throat.  
“A cute parlor trick. Possibly useful...”  
“Yeah, it’s gonna be real useful to keep us alive long enough to get out of here,” he said.  
Reaper paused in his tracks, snorting. “As if that’s a problem.”

“It might not seem like one now because we still got some breathable air. See, what you probably don’t know is that Vishkar uses pressurized vaults to store all their sensitive equipment. We got, like, maybe an hour’s air, tops. So either we work together to get out of here, or we suffocate together here.”

“You use the word ‘we’ a lot for someone who has no idea who he’s dealing with.”  
“Hey, freedom fighters gotta fight, and even YOU have to breathe,” Lucio said.  
He wasn’t actually sure that was true.   
But Reaper didn’t say anything to refute it. 

For the next while, they went in separate directions in the room, casing it for points of weakness.  
Lucio found out it was basically sealed off almost like an armored walk-in freezer. The one door that led into the place was the only opening; all the other walls were plate-steel, overlapped with flush rivets holding everything in place. The floor was concrete, polished to give it an icy sheen.

There were also no other points of entry. The single door was all there was.  
Eventually they came back around to the room’s center, standing opposite each other with nothing at all to say.   
“What, no plans, hero? No comrades in arms to kick in the door and come in to rescue you, guns akimbo?” Reaper finally said.   
“I’m surprised you haven’t tried to kill me,” Lucio said, ignoring Reaper’s dig.  
Reaper was silent, then; he leaned back against a crate, crossing his arms over his chest.   
“There’s always tomorrow.”  
“Yeah, well, not if you suffocate with me in this room.”   
Reaper was silent.

Lucio could feel the sweat starting up on his back, running down his spine in itchy rivulets. Where were the security guys? They HAD to have realized the place was compromised--shouldn’t someone have found the camera jammer by now?   
HE swallowed, his tongue drying out at the thought of the alternative.  
Maybe they’d found and gotten rid of his security cam jammer immediately, and they were just watching the two of them, waiting to see how long it would take them to die.   
He wouldn’t put it past them. 

Part of him wonered if Reaper had any idea what Vishkar was capable of--what they’d DO to a guy like him, who, if you thought about it, would probably make a really valuable lab specimen.  
“Are you SERIOUSLY not going to do anything?” he blurted, after a long moment.  
Reaper, who had been studying the claws of his gauntlets, looked up at him and feigned being shocked. 

“Why should I bother? I’m sure your team will come save you at any second, and the news cameras will be on their asses, and I’ll be able to leave and finish the job later.” Reaper said.   
“Uh huh.” He looked the other man up and down. “You can’t get out of here either,” Lucio said, “Or else you would have already left. But you ain’t gonna admit that, are you?”

“You’re the hero,” Reaper said. He sounded almost bored. “YOU think of something. Let’s say this mercenary isn’t the most…creative.”  
Ludio wondered how much of his carelessness was faked. 

A few minutes later he had a workable plan, though. He decided to run with it and hope Reaper wouldn’t try to kill him before they both made it out.  
“So I use my amp, crank the frequency down real low, and give the door a litle rumble. Maybe I can loosen it in its housing or even shake some screws loose or something. Then--” He was saying.  
Reaper made a noise of disagreement. “You said the door was pressurized. Why would that work?”

“If I can shake it up for long enough, maybe--can you do the black smoke thing and force it the rest of the way open?”  
Reaper grumbled a little under his breath, and paced away growling.  
But after a moment of this he returned to where Lucio was standing, his hands clenching and unclenching at his sides. “It’s your move, hero.”

Lucio nodded, wiped sweat off his forehead with the back of one forearm. He hunched close to the door, near the shot-out panel, and pressed the amp close to the edge of the door.   
He pressed his amp speaker flat against the wall, bracing his arm behind it.   
“Okay, let’s do this!”  
The amp hummed, pulsed twice in his hand. For a moment nothing happened besides him being able to feel the vibrations making his forearm feel like it was going to turn to jelly. Then, with an almost agonizing slowness he could see the vibrations shaking the door open a tiny sliver, faintly exposing the white of the door’s silicone seals. The door was vibrating so fast its edge looked fuzzy, the serial numbers along its edge a blue-black blur.

Beside him, Reaper made a noise like a man gasping for air. Lucio smelled blood and smoke and then when he turned his head the other man was nothing but a man-shaped cloud of vapor, indistinct as a shadow. Lucio watched the smoke sift through the tiny gap  
in the door, disappearing entirely on the other side.  
The indicator on the amp’s side was showing its charge was almost depleted. 

His vision swimming, blue and yellow lights prickling in front of his eyes as he tried to make his eyes focus on the door. He was soaked with sweat and could barely breathe.  
He had enough time to look up through the glass to see Reaper raise his shotgun, but the blast didn’t register at all through the soundproof door.

There was suddenly a loud, pressurized sound of shattering glass, like a huge lightbulb breaking, and then the sudden sucking sensation of the room depressurising: Reaper must have compromised both the airlock doors and the inner doors. Very briefly he felt like he was in a speeding car with all the windows suddenly rolled down; the door creaked and groaned as its hydraulic locks failed. 

When the air stopped, he flung himself back on the door, snatched the gaps in between the two halves, forcing the halves apart and staggering into the airlock.  
The airlock floor was littered with shards of broken glass and twisted metal; Reaper had apparently decided not to waste time with subtlety. Lucio could see there wasa still-smoldering hole where the door control panel had been, the only remnants of the control panel itself being a smear of melted plastic and twisted aluminum, stubs of blackened silicon sticking out here and there.   
From somewhere else in the facility, he could hear alarm klaxons going off.  
The other man was nowhere to be found. 

He looked back into the storeroom, sighed, and slipped a flat oblong of plastic out of his pocket. It was crude-looking--a battery with a timer, some wires, and some magnets attached--but it was effective; the electrical discharge it would release would fry every device in the room. He slid it back into the room, watching with satisfaction as it slid beneath the pallet that the biggest crates were on.  
A moment later he was rushing away, hurrying down silent, empty corridors. 

He made it all the way back down to the loading docks before he heard the first sound--a sharp pop followed by a loud snapping, crackling noise, a hungry electrical monster chewing up the circuits of all the Vishkar shit in the storeroom. The lights in the hallway blinked out, then back on again.  
Lucio didn’t look back.


	2. Insomnia for Beginners

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Reaper returns like a bad dream. Lucio panics. Everyone else is skeptical. Lucio gets helpful, but not applicable, physician's advice. A late-night guest of an unexpected sort.

The next morning, when he came down to breakfast, everyone else was already assembled around the table. He paused in the doorway, frowning; he hadn’t looked at the time and didn’t know how late in the morning it was.  
“You look like hell,” McCree said cheerfully, slapping him on the shoulder. “Must’ve been one helluva run.”

“Yeah, I guess you could say that,” he said. He offered up a small, cheerless smile to all those gathered: Zenyatta and Genji, sitting at the table’s far end and playing a game on a tablet; Hanzo, sitting stiffly at Genji’s side and eating a bowl of congee and serving of tamagoyaki...beside which (and very near Genji’s elbow) there was ANOTHER bowl of congee which he was apparently doing his best not to look at; Winston, frowning at his own tablet and drawing schematics for something on it, while also drinking a glass of orange juice. Lena was demolishing a plate of sausage and fried eggs and drinking tea out of the biggest mug Lucio had ever seen. Dr. Ziegler was nowhere to be seen, though there was a vacant chair and empty spot at the table.

Everyone paused and waved or greeted him. McCree handed him a cup of coffee so thick it looked like blackstrap molasses and Lucio finally looked at the table, which was already set. Everything was arranged family-style. There was a big pot of congee, a huge tray of sausages and bacon, a bowl of fruit piled so high it would be impossible to see over it, a platter of biscuits, and a large plate of fried eggs and another of tamagoyaki, sliced into neat yellow ovals. There were also five carafes--one of coffee, one of apple juice, and two of orange juice, one of which Winston seemed to be monopolizing. The fifth contained some thin green puree, and stood beside a much smaller bottle of bright yellow oil, nearest where Genji and Zenyatta were sitting.  
Lucio noticed that Hanzo was trying very hard not to look directly at the jug of green liquid, and mostly failing.  
Everything was so normal, the previous night’s happenings might have been a strange dream. He fought the urge to rub his eyes.  
Then Morrison, who had been reading something on his own tablet, set it down and looked up at Lucio.  
“There was an explosion at a Vishkar holding facility last night,” he said.  
Lucio froze where he stood. 

“Oh! I’m reading some reports about that right now, Morrison. Apparently they had some highly sensitive items stored in a special pressurized storeroom. This news report says their airlock failed, and the massive decompression destroyed everything inside,” Winston said. 

McCree whistled. “What the hell kind of tech do you need to keep in a room with an airlock?”  
“Things that cannot be subjected to normal variances in air humidity or static electricity,” Hanzo said, without looking up from his bowl. “There are some Japanese companies that use such technology to manufacture state-of-the-art computer components.”  
“Well, hell,” McCree said. “Almost seems like it’d be more trouble than it’s worth...”  
“You did not say that when we went to the museum and they had pressurized glass cases for those antique pistols,” Hanzo said. This time he flicked an amused look at McCree, smirking a little.

“Well, now, that’s a different matter, those were two-hunnerd-year-old pieces of history, you can’t just go lettin’ those get all rusted. And you know well as i do you can’t leave no gun in humidity! ‘specially not those old wood-stock pistols. They’d get all mildewy...”  
“How is it you understand THAT but not why sophisticated technology requires such care?” Hanzo asked.  
“Now, I never said i didn’t UNDERSTAND it. I said i didn’t see the POINT behind it. Those’re two different things...”  
The conversation moved onto other things. 

Lucio, feeling uncertain that he had been spared, took a seat beside McCree, who was sitting across from Hanzo.  
Unfortunately this put HIM directly across from Morrison, who for all he knew spent the entire meal staring at him through his visor. He couldn’t tell. He didn’t even want to look. 

~

The first time Lucio saw him after that, he thought he was hallucinating.  
It made sense: he was riding the dregs of a three-day caffeine-fueled bender, in which he cranked out eight tracks, fucked around with something he wanted to remix, and plotted the lights for a new show. 

So when he finally got up to take a shower and returned to his room, wringing his dripping locs out in a faded t-shirt, when he saw the huddle of black on the chair in the corner of his room, he figured maybe he’d tossed a hoodie and some other junk there.  
Until he strode across the room to the dresser and the heap of black stood up, buckles jangling softly. 

He was back out the door and down the hall so fast he didn’t even remember it, covering the hundred meters or so down the hallway in what felt like seconds and stumbling into the common room, clutching the wet shirt and his towel to his chest and crotch, respectively.  
“Lucio! Whatever is the matter?” Angela asked. The book she’d been holding hit the floor with a crack when she stood up quickly.

Lena and McCree, who had been sitting on the couch watching something on TV, both sat up in alarm as they saw him.  
“That guy Reaper’s in the base,” he said. His voice was high and tight and the words came out too fast; McCree helped him up, asked him to repeat himself.  
Lucio, who was only wearing a stained a-shirt and a pair of shorts, heaved a huge breath and dragged a hand down his face.

“Reaper! He--he’s in the base! I saw him, he was--he was--” he gestured helplessly down the hallway.  
McCree and Lena exchanged glances. Quietly, Lena stood up; she blinked out of existence for a moment and then winked back intp the room, her pistols in her hands.  
“Lucio, you wait here,” she said. “I’ll go sort this out.”  
“I’ll cover you,” McCree said. 

Angela put out a quiet alert across Athena’s systems, and in no time the base was a flurry of activity--everyone scrambled, hunting from room to room for the intruder.  
After a thirty-minute search they all rejoined each other in the common room.  
“There have been no perimeter breaches,” Genji said.  
A moment later Hanzo came in, wringing dust from his hands with a rag. “The rooftops are clear,” he said.  
“I swear, man! He was--he was IN my room! Just--just sitting there!” 

“If he was, he’s gone now,” Morrison said. “Sensors at all access points are clear. Lucio. Are you SURE of what you saw? We all know that exhaustion can wreak havoc on your mind.”  
“I just stayed up late a couple days, it wasn’t like nobody was shock-prodding me awake everytime I nodded off! I SAW him!” Lucio continued.  
He knew he was raising his voice, but couldn’t make himself calm down.  
Everyone was staring now, their eyes wide. 

Hanzo kept looking between Lucio and the open doorway to the hallway, as if he half-expected Reaper to appear there himself. Angela looked like she felt really bad for him and was watching him repeatedly slam his head in a door; Winston looked confused, and Lena looked very, very concerned.

“Listen. You all don’t REALLY think I been stayin’ up late long enough to hallucinate I saw a guy, right?” he asked. “Right?”  
“Reaper isn’t exactly known for being stealthy when he invades an area,” Morrison grumbled. “If it was him, why didn’t he shoot?”  
“I don’t know! But he was there, just sittin’ on a chair, like, ‘Hey, how YOU doin’, IN MY ROOM!” Lucio continued, waving his arm at the hallway.  
No one said anything for a long, long moment. 

Lucio felt a sense of pent-up panic rising in himself. They didn’t believe him! He felt the helples frustration welling in himself like watching a room flood.  
“Seriously, man, i know what I saw!”  
“Lucio,” Winston said, very gently, “If there had been any systems breach, Athena would have sent out an alert immediately.”  
Lena was the one who stood up for him. “This isn’t fair! He says he saw him, and I believe him. We don’t even know what this Reaper fellow is capable of! For all we know he’s hiding in the air ducts, disguised as a cloud of soot!”  
At this, the entire group became uneasy. Winston called Athena to put up a general security alert; out of their housing in the hall ceilings, small camera domes dropped, little blue lights flashing to show they were at the ready. 

As they were all leaving the room, Angela put her hand on his arm and gave him a sympathetic look. “Please, come and talk to me in a few minutes. I think it may help.”  
By then, though, Lucio had made up his mind about something.  
So he followed her down the hallway to the infirmary--Winston walked with them, gruff and silent and glaring at shadows--and left them at the doors with an authoritative huff.  
He patted Lucio on the shoulder. “Whatever is wrong, I’m sure Angela can help you,” he said.  
“Yeah…” Lucio said. “Thanks, man.”

Winston nodded once, adjusted his glasses, and then strode away, apparently unafraid. Lucio thought, I wouldn’t be scared of anything, either, if I was eight hundred pounds of solid muscle, with three-inch fangs for teeth.  
He didn’t have any time to articulate the thougtht beyond that, because Angela had walked into one of the many side-cubicles she’d set up as her office.  
He followed her a moment later, sitting down in the chair she gestured at. She’d seated herself in a rolling chair opposite the regular chair he settled down in, near enough to the door but around a corner.

“Now,” she said, “I must caution you, I am not a trained psychiatrist. However, given the severity of what you saw, I think I can make an exception,” she said. She kept her tones light and her smile bright, and he knew she was trying to get him to calm down.  
Like he was only seconds away from a fit of hysterics or something, Lucio thought. He was both annoyed and sad, but those two feelings had largely displaced the panic: he had the mental pictiure of Reaper coming up against Hanzo and ending up a pincushion, or Genji, and being shredded into little meaty bits, or Lena, riddling him with pulse rounds that would drive him off, snarling and furious and full of smoking holes. It made him feel a bit better.

“I know what you probably think,” Lucio said, spreading his hands. “But I’m NOT loopy from bein’ tired, I swear.”  
“I understand how you could think that,” Angela said. “For someone who has had so little sleep, you ARE very high-finctioning. However, I cannot advise you to continue doing that. It’s terrible for you in the long run.”  
Lucio wiped at his still-damp nose and chin, sighing. “Yeah, Doc, but I gotta say, I had plenty of sleepless nights, and I’ve never seen someone just appear in front of me.”  
“The human brain is an incredibly powerful organ, Lucio,” she said. “Some of its capabilities are not fully understood yet, even by scientists who have been studying it for decades. That being said, one of the most common forms of hallucination are brought about by simple overwork. Visual hallucions do not mean you are losing your grip on reality, but they ARE a sign that your brain is in desperate need of REM sleep. What often happens when the brain is over-tired is that you begin to see dreamlike images while you are awake. Your brain will project your dreams into your reality. Much of what we dream is experienced in the areas of the brain related to sight and sound--some people report they begin to hear ringing or buzzing sounds, or even voices, when they are exhausted and in need of sleep.”

“Yeah, but Doc, I was only awake for like two days,” Lucio protested.  
Angela gave him a look, one eyebrow arched.  
Lucio sighed, rolling his eyes a little. “Okay, two and a half. That’s only, what, forty-eight, fifty hours?”  
Angela shook her head. “There is no single threshold for when these things begin to set in. And this is not well-known, but it is possible to run up a sleep debt. Your body is aware of how much rest it needs; push it too far and it will begin to make its demands known in other ways.”

Lucio had never heard of a couple all-nighters making people see things, but he had the sense not to say that. Instead, he just sighed and nodded, his gaze going to the scuffed carpet underfoot.  
“If it would help you rest, I could set up a secure area here, in the infirmary,” she offered.  
“Aw, thanks, Doc Z, but...I don’t wanna bug you or nothin’. There’s the security alert. I think I’ll just...I dunno, sleep somewhere else for tonight. I’ll be all right,” he lied.

“Ah,” she said. For a moment she narrowed her eyes and he was afraid she would press, but then she added, “Lucio, I know you are young, and I know we have been here for nearly a month doing seemingly nothing, so your restlessness is understandable. But...all doctorly lecturing aside, getting adequate sleep is very, very important for mental health and emotional stability. Please do not overexert yourself with either your music or your work for our organization.”  
He nodded, then, plastering on the most natural fake smile he could manage.

“Yeah, you’re right. I...I’ll be okay, though. You can’t stop the music!”  
She laughed, then, gently. “Perhaps not. Still, perhaps taking a more...down-tempo approach to life for a little while would be beneficial?”  
He pretended to scoff. “I mean, I can’t make any promises...”  
“Ahhh, but I know you will do your best,” she said, and winked at him. “Now, go! Take a nap. We have no team exercises scheduled for the next three weeks. Winston is working on some very important data for us; you should use the time to rest. You never know where we may have to go next.”  
He nodded, smiling in earnest, then. “Sure, Doc. I’ll try to take it easy,” he said.

~

Lucio wound up sleeping on the couch in the main room that first night, his amp on the floor within easy reach. His dreams were a blur of exhaustion and panic.  
He couldn’t just sleep on it, though

At 2:30 in the morning two nights later, while the rest of the team was either asleep or in the common room watching old movies with Reinhardt, he sat up late in front ot his laptop, running searches on anything that seemed remotely connected to Reaper.  
The meeting room he’d chosen to sit in was cold; without the extra people to offset the air conditioning, it was enough that he was shivering a little, even with the hoodie he was wearing.  
Still he didn’t feel comfortable going back to his room.  
If anyone asked, he’d have said he was doing an acoustics test and needed a larger space.  
He considered himself very lucky that no one came in.

He found stories, more collections of shady rumors than anything else, of a series of attacks on gangs in Mexico, stories of hideouts full of guys apparently drained of all their blood and turned into mummified husks, all the guns and ammo in the places cleaned out. Other reports, these ones from reputable news sources, about attacks on Overwatch museums, artefacts and gear looted and guards mummified where they stood--their blood and fluids drained completely.  
Lucio read everything he could with a growing sense of dread. 

In an American forum he found even more shady rumors--some guy dressed like the Grim Reaper going around casually killing cops and emptying out police station armories like it was nothing. There he found embedded vidoes, all grainy security-cam footage in washed-out shades of bluish-white and black, of a man in a long black coat, the hood up. He moved with a kind of sinuous, careless assurance, a complete lack of fear. In the video, which had no sound, Lucio saw a cop unload an entire clip into the man in the black coat, who was advancing down a hall with his back to the camera. He saw the cop’s face, white as cottage cheese in the video, his features twisted up in shock and horror before--before suddenly the man in the black coat was not a man, was a black cloud, wrapping around the man like a choking shroud. The cop flailed around for a little bit and then stiffened up, his hands clawing at his face. 

Reaper reformed behind the cop--now a shriveled corpse--and for a single instant that froze Lucio to the bone, he looked up.  
From the angle, it looked like he was staring straight at the camera, the skeletal mask unreadable. 

He dropped the dead cop and strode down the hall, and Lucio saw him draw a huge shotgun out of his coat and blast through the reinforced glass security doors that had come down, as if they were nothing.  
The video ended there.

Beneath it there were links to dozens more, and beneath those, people clamoring in the comments section that it had to be a hoax, there was no way it was real, the video was a clip from some obscure old horror movie...  
Lucio pushed his chair back from his computer and sighed.  
Nothing was coming up conclusive. 

And Reaper still hadn’t shown back up in the base, and certainly not in his room, which he avoided unless he needed clean clothes, since he’d moved most of his important stuff into the main room or meeting room.  
The others were all giving him weird or pitying looks because of that, and he was pretending not to notice.  
It was starting to get old.  
He moved back into his room later that night and told himself to forget about it.

~

His attempt backfired two nights later when Reaper reappeared in his room.  
This time he was sitting in front of his computer typing, and got up to get a water bottle that he’d knocked onto the floor. By the time he’d recovered the bottle, which had rolled under the desk, and gotten back in his seat, the other man was already there, sitting still as death on the edge of his bed.  
He jumped back so quickly that he banged his elbow on the desk’s corner; swearing softly, he scrambled backwards towards the door.  
Reaper cocked his head. “Do you really think that’s a smart idea?”  
“What do you want?” Lucio yelped.  
“I’m surprised you don’t remember! Our little agreement,” Reaper said. He stood up and the coat rasped back and fell around his ankles like a black pall, but his boots on the carpet were soundless.  
Lucio very suddenly wished he hadn’t soundproofed his room quite so well.  
“What agreement?” Lucio asked.  
“The agreement where you let me see that little sonic healing toy you have, and I don’t do anything regrettable to you.” Reaper said, striding closer. “Or don’t you think that’s a fair payment for me saving your life?”  
“The hell are you talking about, man?” Lucio asked.  
Reaper snorted. “You really think you could have gotten out of there on your own?”  
“Fuck you! If it wasn’t for me and my amp shaking the door loose, YOU wouldn’t have been able to get out, either!”  
“What happened to ‘teamwork’? I like to think we weren’t...terrible...together...” Reaper said.  
“I was on a mission. I RAN INTO you. It wasn’t like I planned any of that!” Lucio said.  
“Do you think the news sheeple will see it that way?” Reaper asked. His voice was a lazy drawl.  
Lucio’s mouth dried up.  
Then Reaper laughed--a low, stony chuckle. “But that’s not something you have to worry about. This won’t go that far. Now. The amp.”  
“It’s a really volatile prototype. It’s the only one, and I’m the only one who knows how to use it,” he said.  
He felt safer, with his back flush to the wall--not that it meant much against a man who could literally turn into a cloud of smoke. Maybe Lena had been right and he really HAD been hiding in the air ducts the whole time.  
Lucio started to sidle towards the door.  
Reaper shifted towards him; he froze.  
“Careful,” the other man said.  
For a long moment they were silent. Then Reaper held up his hands--gauntleted, but empty.  
“Do you really want to do this the hard way?” he asked. “It’s simple. You give me what I want...and I give you what you want.”  
“Which is what, exactly?” Lucio shot back.  
Reaper didn’t say. Lucio had a feeling it was something like, ‘I let you live,’ or something equally trite but no less true.  
But when Reaper DIDN’T say anything else, Lucio demanded, “That’s all you want? A few minutes’ health boost?”  
“Yes.”  
“Why should I believe you?”  
“Because I asked nicely. Why would I be asking for something if I could supposedly just kill you and TAKE it? Besides,” Reaper rasped, “Even you just said, it’s a volatile prototype. Only YOu know how to use it. So...use it.”  
“There’s an ‘or else’ at the end of that, isn’t there?” Lucio said.  
“I prefer to leave certain things to the imagination, at least some of the time,” Reaper said. “And I really don’t think you want to raise an alert at a time like this. What WOULD your teammates say, if they knew YOU were the one going around leaving little presents in Vishkar vaults?”  
Lucio gritted his teeth and forced himself to his feet. “They know the kind of things I had to do, and I TOLD them the kind of shit Vishkar does. They’d have my back.”  
Reaper was completely silent and stood so still for so long that Lucio had enough time to take a long, hard look at the other man.  
His black coat was ashen with dirt, or roof dust; the mask was cracked, and one of his arm-guards’ vicious spikes had been snapped off. All down one side of his body the armor was either cracked or chipped.  
He looked like he’d gotten into a mess.  
Lucio bit his lips.  
Finally, Reaper shook his head a little and muttered, “You sound so SURE of that.”  
Suddenly Lucio remembered the faces of diseblief he’d gotten from his own teammates, and a hot flare of embarrassed humiliation flared in his gut.  
“Push off,” Lucio snapped.  
“Oh, I most definitely will,” Reaper said, spreading his arms wide. “After you’ve given me what I asked for.”  
He couldn’t reach the door without taking a step closer to the man, Lucio knew. Then there was the question of what weapons he had on him...  
There was nothing else he could do.  
Lucio bent and snapped open teh clasps on his amp’s case, without taking his eyes of Reaper. He slipped on the glove, adjusted it until all the contact points aligned with his fingertips.  
He trained the device on Reaper and thumbed it up to a mild level, enough that he felt his own pulse pick up. His whole body felt warm, bellied up on rising waves of sound as soothing as the vibes coming off a big speaker. He took a deep breath.  
In front of him, Reaper had been standing stiffly as a wooden soldier, but he saw the bigger man do the same--a big breath in and out, and then his shoulders grdually dropped. He released another breath that he maybe hadn’t realized he’d been holding, and then made a small groan of pleasure, his arms hanging loose at his sides.  
After a few more moments like this he tilted his head back like a man enjoying a warm sauna--  
\--Only to snap his glare back on Lucio a few seconds later.  
“Does that thing go any higher?” he demanded.  
“Yeah,” Lucio said, a little breathless.  
That was how they spent the first night: sitting across from one another on Lucio’s floor, Reaper’s back to one foam-padded wall, Lucio’s back to the side of his bed.  
He kept his hands on his knees, where Lucio could see them, and Lucio kept one finger on the amp and one hand splayed beside him, ready to push himself upright and run if he had to.  
Reaper didn’t move, though, until the window was barred with the pale lilac-white of dawn: then, rising slowly with a rasp of heavy material, he stood up.  
Lucio scrambled to his feet and almost fell over: both his legs were asleep from the knee down.  
He watched the bigger man flex his arms a few times, curling and uncurling his fingers.  
Reaper made a pleased rumble in his throat--which quickly transformed into a hum, and then into a quiet, amused laugh.  
“FANTASTIC,” he said. “I’ll see you again.”  
Then he was gone, a smoky shadow slowly dissipating on the evening breeze, leaving behind only the lingering smell of old blood as proof that he had ever been there at all.


	3. Chapter 3

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The first time they fell asleep together, it was an accident.

The first time they fell asleep together, it was an accident. 

He’d been minding his own business, out for a run for real this time, when two guys in a white truck pulled up alongside him and shot a net out of a cannon at him.  
He was moving out of the way of the truck, wondering why the hell they were driving s close to the curb anyway, when he registered the popping sound the cannon made before the net hit him like a heavy blanket and he went down in a tangle of elbows and knees. 

He had just enough time to start really freaking out when the guys climbed out of the truck and he saw one of them had a flechette gun--quiet, quick, and an excellent way to make someone’s death seem ‘accidental’--when the guy crumpled forward with a bitten-off shout. He was laying there writhing in the street and clutching at his thigh, where a bloody hole had suddenly appeared.  
The second guy didn’t fare much better; while Lucio was struggling with the heavy net mesh, he could hear the scuffle going on, and through the gaps in the mesh see a figure in a long black coat.  
Please, he thought, let him not suck the life out of these poor assholes and make me watch.

Reaper didn’t. Instead he chopped the guy in the throat--hard enough to down him, apparently, so the guy laid there on the ground groaning and twitching. Then he took one look at Lucio, shook his head, and then climbed into the truck. A moment later he climbed back out, snarling in disgusted annoyance.  
And it was broad daylight in the nearly-abandoned industrial district of the city, but Lucio felt more afraid than if it had been the middle of the night.  
“What the fuck, man?! What the fuck! Cut me loose! Come ON!”   
Instead, Reaper grabbed two handfuls of the net, hauled him to his feet, and snarled, “Don’t you understand what a _TRAP_ is?”   
“...What?”

And then Reaper just started ripping the net away from him, nylon fibers bursting and unraveling under the gauntlets’ sharp grip.   
“ _PLEASE_ tell me you at least had the sense to bring your amp,” Reaper said.  
“Are you kiddin’? I never go anywehre without it these days!”   
“Then get ready to _USE IT_!”  
Because of course the guys had reinforcements; a sleek white car cruised around the corer like an orca cornering seals, stopping suddenly in the middle of the street. A bunch of people in overly-tailored, obviously expensive suits climbed out. 

One, a woman who looked like concept art of a greyhound, didn’t waste any time at all: she raised her hand and fired two shots out of a flechette pistol.   
Lucio thumbed his amp on and had it aimed at Reaper before the guy could say anything, or needed to. He watched two little puffs of red splatter out of the back of the man’s coat, just under his right shoulder; Reaper jerked twice but remained on his feet.  
He pulled two shotguns literally out of nowhere and fired three shots at the woman, who feinted sideways. She shouted something in a language Lucio didn’t understand, ducking out of sight and away from Reaper’s aim.

Three other people had climbed out of the car, as well--another woman and two men, all dressed in gray and white. The other woman, stately and plump and wearing a pair of mirrored sunglasses, had what looked like a nightstick in one hand; she advanced towards them with her black-painted lips compressed in a grim line. In two movements she shook the nightstick back and forth, and a long mercury-bright sibbon seemed to explode out of the end.   
“Shit, she’s got a razor-whip! Don’t let it--”  
“Yes, thank you, I can _SEE IT_ ,” Reaper hissed, shoving him away.   
He leveled a shotgun at her, too late--there was a whistling noise and then a sudden crack, and Reaper’s gun clattered out of his hand in pieces. He threw it down, leapt back, and pulled another one out of nowhere.

Lucio swept around to the side while she was drawing back again, and got her square in the chest wiht two repulsor blasts, which knocked her back into the last guy. He had blandly-offensive Ken doll good looks, and was wearing a white gauntlet that extended up one arm, and a blue visor flickering pale every now and then--a hardlight-builder, Lucio guessed, and before he could drop a sentry or anything else, Lucio had rushed over and hit him twice with his amp. The man raised his gauntlet to block and Lucio switched to repulsor, knocking him back so hard he rolled backwards over the hood of the car and hit the pavement on the other side, grunting.

Razor Whip was giving Reaper a run for his money, dodging between cars and lashing at him where he couldn’t get a clean shot at her.   
Lucio had enough time to wonder where Flechette Gun was when he heard a car door open and had enough time to duck before there was the poisonous hiss of three shots. The sabots left holes no bigger than pinpricks in the door of the car behind him, and he rolled, flung up his arm, fired three shots with his amp.  
She ducked behind their car’s open door, the window exploding out from the force of the sound shockwaves. 

Lucio heard a growl and then Reaper’s voice, loud and hoarse, screaming something.   
The sound of gunfire, rattling shells falling to the ground--then silence.   
Lucio didn’t need to see a second opportunity to take it--he was on his feet and rushing away as fast as he could--into a nearby alley, which proved to be blocked off at its farthest end by a chainlink fence festooned with wind-blown garbage. 

He started to climb up the fence for a moment, remembered Reaper, and ehsitated.  
A moment later he went back towards the mouth of the alley--just in time to hear three more shots, followed by a car revving its engine and speeding off.  
Reaper staggered into the alley--Lucio made a noise of complaint--before the man took another step forward, or tried to, and collapsed.   
Lucio’s first instinct was to jump up and help the guy--then, remembering _WHO_ he was, he took a step back, conflicting ideas warring inside him.  
Reaper was coughing wetly behind the mask, the force sending convulsions through his whole body.   
“Don’t touch me,” Reaper said roughly, when Lucio reached for him.

Lucio watched the man as he sat up and propped his back against the brick wall; he was handling his limbs like they were all too heavy for him, suddenly clumsy now when out of the fury of the fight.   
“Okay, all right, I won’t,” Lucio said.   
“...control it when I’m injured...” Reaper muttered. 

“Where are you hurt?” Lucio asked, his hands hovering over the other man.   
Reaper was silent, shaking his head, his chest working like a bellows but apparently not helping him at all.   
He stank of smoke and something else; high and acrid, sharp enough that the inside of Lucio’s nose stung just from breathing it in.   
Lucio could see the armor over his chest was shredded, pinholes oozing blood as thick as wax. Three fingers on one of his hands were nothing more than stumps, barely even bleeding. 

He looked back at the mouth of the alley _real_ hard before kneeling next to Reaper, pulling out his amp.   
“Why did you save me?” Lucio demanded.

This time when Reaper snorted, it dissolved into painful-souding coughing halfway through. “I didn’t. You were…in the way. I was on a job…I told you…and I didn’t need you as collateral. The rest of your little…friends would be on my ass like rabid dogs.”  
Lucio thumbed up the amp; Reaper grunted, struggling to sit up straighter, coughing hard.   
“Hey, hey, man, you--you’re messed up real bad. Listen, we--we gotta get you somewhere, we can’t--we can’t stay out here, you--”

Reaper shoved at his shoulder with his intact hand. “Stop panicking. Why can’t you just turn up your little toy and heal me faster?”  
“It ain’t gonna make your fingers grow back, man! It doesn’t do that!” Lucio cried.  
Reaper’s head lolled back against the wall. He kept coughing, until finally he grabbed Lucio by a handful of his shirt to pull him close enough to whisper something.  
He said one word, and that was, “Safehouse.”

~

The ‘safehouse’ was an abandoned warehouse. Vast, tall blocks of rusted-out machinery cluttered the entire front area, the ceiling open to expose the metal rafters stretching up overhead like the blood-rust-colored branches of dead trees. High and far above the roof was corrugated metal, spotted with rust rings here and there.   
There was a smallish office inside it, located at the back of the place and up a narrow metal staircase that had no handrails. 

Reaper wouldn’t let Lucio help him walk, so Lucio sort of shuffled alongside him with his amp on, though it didn’t seem to be helping Reaper much.   
At least he wasn’t coughing like he was going to hock up a chunk of his own lung, anymore.

The lock was an old-fashioned number-punch keypad; Reaper leaned over it while he punched the code with his intact hand, muttering indistinctly under his breath as he did.  
Lucio hesitated a long while on the doorstep, before from inside the darkened interior Reaper snapped, “Get _IN_ here! The last thing I need is for whoever is tailing us to see you just _STANDING_ there like some boyscout trying to sell _COOKIES_ or some shit!”  
“Okay, man, damn, I’m _SORRY_!” Lucio said, stumbling inside.

Reaper slammed the door behind him and for a moment Lucio just stood there in the darkness that smelled like dust and wet concrete and old metal, until his eyes adjusted: there was a little light, coming from a single fluorescent lightbar overhead.  
Whatever he’d expected the man’s safehouses to look like, this wasn’t it.

They stood in a narrow hallway, empty except for a single metal footlocker that seemed to only contain boots and leg armor.   
Reaper was down at the other end of the hallway, leaned heavily against a wall, swearing and punching a code into another locked door. 

This time when it swung open he looked over at Lucio, who hurried over, nervousness prickling all over his skin like he’d walked into a cold room.   
PArt of him couldn’t believe this was real.   
The other part was pretty sure he was going to have to fight for his life _just_ to get out of the place.  
He decided he was ready for that part. 

Inside-- _really_ inside--the lights were just as dim as the hallway, and Lucio could see that everywhere there were low huddles of furniture--there was an old couch, a plain table, a single chair across from an old, obviously-scavenged TV, cracked across its screen and with a mass of wires connecting it to a bootlegged reception box.   
The place looked like the squat of an old homeless man. There were a few gunmetal-colored footlockers, one under the table, one beside the couch, but other than that, there was nothing remarkable or even out of the ordinary. 

Reaper went to one of the lockers and knelt. He must have accidentally done something to his injured hand, though, becayse he reeled away with a low, hard cry of pain, kicking the locker away from himself.   
Lucio watched him stomp around, clutching the wrist of his injured hand and swearing viciously.   
“Hey,” he said, “ _HEY_! Let me see it!”  
He held out one hand, unsure if Reaper would even let him see the injury.  
The man stared at his hand long and hard, like he was offering him a piece of roadkill on a stick.

But after a long while of just standing there and breahting hard, he finally--very hesitantly--put his hand in Lucio’s.   
The stumps had scabbed over, but the scabs were bubbly and gooey in a way that made Lucio feel nauseous and sad all at the same time. Something was seriously wrong with the guy.   
Lucio turned his hand over, looking at the back, where the skin was peeled like someone had taken an apple peeler to a ripe fruit.

Lucio frowned, fighting back the urge to wince.  
“I should clean this before I do anything else to--”  
“Just _HEAL_ it, damn it!” Reaper yelled.  
“So your fucking hand can get infected and your arm can rot off and you can _DIE OF SEPSIS_?!” Lucio shouted back.   
“I CAN’T GET FUCKING SEPSIS! I CAN’T GET ANY FUCKING THING! NOW FIX MY FUCKING HAND!” Reaper was roaring now, the sound loud enough that it was hurting Lucio’s ears just to stand close to him, the sound reverbrating in the tiny space.   
There were trickles and flecks of red around the mask’s mouth, dribbles mixed with droplets of saliva.

Lucio pulled away from him, but only for a moment--he couldn’t stop staring at the other man, equally afraid and worried.  
“Okay, man, okay! I just...You’re bleeding so much it’s...it’s coming out on your mask...” Lucio said.   
Reaper touched the mask, smearing some of the droplets around the mouth, then brought his hand away, looking down at his other hand; he held up both hands in front of his face, seeming to register his missing fingers only vaguely. Like an old man unaware of his surroundings, he turned and shuffled to the couch, and sank down, completely silent.   
Lucio stood there, frreaked out and completely unsure what to do. 

Reaper had stopped moving and was just sitting there, staring at his hands; after awhile, Lucio edged closer to the couch before finally, very carefully, sitting down at its farthest edge. He put the amp in his lap, still turned on, and just looked at the other man.  
It felt like a long time before Reaper seemed to remember that he was there; he turned his head very, very slowly, and mumbled, “...You can take off my gloves. I...” he held up his ruined hand.

Lucio nodded and carefully scooted closer. He didn’t reach for the other man, though--he just held out his hands and let Reaper put his own hand into his.   
“Sorry...this is...probably gonna hurt...” he said, to preface his actions.  
When Reaper did nothing to acknowledge he’d spoken at all except to make a vague, soft little huff, Lucio glanced up at his face--at his mask. Reaper was staring at the wall directly in front of him, the rest of him unmoving. 

Lucio carefully peeled away the glove, mindful of the gloves’ sharp claws and more careful about the flap of skin that dangled like a sad piece of meat, hanging away from his hand where the meat and tendons were exposed as neatly as a medical diagram. His skin was ashen-brown and bloodless. The hand was large and square, the remaining fingers heavy and blunt. The backs of the remaining knuckles, and one little patch between his pinkie knuckle and wrist, had a delicate little patch of dark hair, almost like a decoration.   
It was so oddly intimate and delicate that Lucio’s stomach was knotting up.

He set the gauntlets and the black under-liner gloves he’d been wearing on a nearby crate, keeping his eyes on Reaper the entire time.  
“Do you have any bandages? This will heal better if I can wrap it first, so everything’s in the right place...”  
Reaper grunted and made a vague gesture with his head, in the direction of one of the footlockers--the one under the table, already open since he’d kicked it. 

There, Lucio found a small stash--surprisingly so--of first-aid supplies, some gauze, sterile pads, a small kit for emergency sutures, liquid skin adhesive. He took the adhesive, figuring stitches would be both pointless and wasteful with his amp’s help.  
Beneath the box of pads there was also an unmarked black metal box that rattled as if full of pills when he jostled through the supplies; it had a lockpad on top. Lucio left it where it was.

He returned to the couch and found Reaper sitting the exact way he’d left him, injured hand resting on one knee and apparently still staring off into space.  
“Hey, hey, hey! Stay with me, man!”  
“Don’t be so noisy,” Reaper muttered. 

Lucio was fighting to tamp down the panic, now; the other man seemed so altered that something _HAD_ to be wrong. Either he was internally bleeding out and there was nothing Lucio could do to help him, or they’d somehow managed to dose him with something.  
“O-oookay,” Lucio crooned. “Listen, okay? I--I have to get a better look at you. You’re messed up real bad and I don’t even know if my amp is helping, or in the right ways.”

“It’s just my hand,” Reaper grunted.   
“That chick _shot_ you a couple times,” Lucio pointed out, feeling tense and ridiculous.   
Reaper’s response was a quiet grunt and a one-armed shrug, lifting and dropping the shoulder of the uninjured hand. 

“Okay, okay, look, just--take off the armor? Here--” Lucio began, but Reaper leaned away groaning like an annoyed old man.  
Lucio slapped the couch. “Okay, then what do you want me to do? ‘Cause the amp is, like, barely helping you at all right now. Want me to just leave?”  
REaper grunted again, and was silent. But he shifted around, shrugging out of the heavy black coat, and held his arms out in front of him and let Lucio unbuckle the heavy tactical armor from his torso. 

The coat ended up scrunched aroun him awkwardly on the couch, and the armor came off to reveal an underlayer of kevlar-knit black turtleneck. In several places across the front there were pinholes ringed around with bloody stains where the flechettes had pierced his body. Lucio hissed quietly in sympathy; Reaper just leaned back against the couch cushions and seemed to almost melt, groaning softly. 

For a long moment he was silent, and Lucio watched him just breathing, with his amp trained on him and activated. 

“You know what they say, you know,” Reaper muttered, so low Lucio thought he was just making noises.  
“No,” Lucio said, holding the amp carefully, “What do they say?”  
“Getting shot feels like someone punching you. It’s not the entry that fucks you up, it’s the exit wounds. They’re always bigger. Huh.” He snorted. “I’ve never been shot with a glorified dart-gun before…” he trailed off.

Lucio bit his lips, glancing down at his amp. IT shouldn’t have taken this long to heal anyone; in some training runs he’d done with the rest of the team, and even on actual missions, after only five or ten minutes they were fine. 

HE had a sudden jolt of fear and worry that the other man wa actually dying, and he would leave Lucio btrapped in his safehouse with no sure way to navigate the way back out. He was still fairly sure the man had the place rigged full of traps. 

“Hey, hey, man, come on, stay with me! Don’t go to sleep!” Lucio said. He started to reach out to shake the guy a little before he remembered exactly who he was, and dropped his hand. 

Reaper was silent a moment, his head lolling against the sofa’s back, before he cocked it sideways to look at Lucio. “Still so noisy,” he grumbled. “Calm down…” He held up his hand where, to Lucio’s shock, his fingers had actually grown back. 

They were scabby and knobbled, still, and looked like the flesh on them wasn’t finished forming, but they were there.

“What the hell?” Lucio breathed. 

Reaper chuckled, but it sounded like suffering. He shook his head. 

“Man...what did they _do_ to you?” Lucio whispered.  
“I’ve dealt with worse. I need more time with your toy to fix all the big holes,” Reaper said.

“I--I didn’t mean--” He hadn’t meant the Vishkar assassins, he started to say. But then it occurred to him that he _really_ shouldn’t press the guy--they were, after all, on his turf, and he’d _seen_ what Reaper could do. No matter how unassuming or plain the place was, it was still a safehouse where one of the world’s most dangerous mercenaries probably had dozens of traps and hudnreds of weapons hidden.  
Lucio swallowed.

~

So they sat there, Reaper barely moving and Lucio afraid to take his eyes off the other man.   
The only sounds were the occasional drone of an airplane passing by overhead, and the sound of traffic on the roads outside. Every now and then Reaper would grunt in pain and stiffen all over, only to go completley limp a moment later. The first time he did it, Lucio jumped up off the couch and cranked his amp’s healing up as high as it would go. 

When this did nothing but make Reaper laugh a little, he said, “What’s wrong? Where’s it hurting?”  
“ _EVERYTHING_ hurts,” REaper muttered. “It always does. Sometimes it just hurts more.”

“Holy shit,” Lucio muttered, shaking his head.   
Reaper put the dart on the same nearby crate with his gauntlets, sagging back against the couch. “You have _no_ idea,” he said.

So he sat there with the other guy, watching him writhe in pain and pick darts out of his skin as his body healed and forced them back out. Every expulsion seemed to make Reaper a little more drained, and Lucio wondered how torn-up the guy’s insides must have been.   
He felt saddened and sick at the same time. 

Finally, finally, a long time passed without Reaper flinching or stiffening like he was being electrocuted. He was silent and very still, his chest rising and falling. When he looked as peaceful as he figured a guy in a skull mask could look, Lucio spoke.

“I have to go,” Lucio said, softly but urgently.   
“Back to your team, of course,” Reaper said. He shifted on the couch.  
“...Well, yeah,” Lucio said.   
“And you’d lead the Vishkar assassins right to your base doorstep. Think your team could handle fourteen or fifteen more of them, all armed to the teeth?” Reaper was speaking quietly, so, so softly. 

Part of Lucio wondered if maybe he was dying and just didn’t want to go alone. He wouldn’t be surprised. The man had been shot so many times in so many weeks that there was no way he wasn’t seriously hurt, even if he _wasn’t_ human.  
Whatever he was. 

“You said they were following me anyway,” Lucio said, trying again.  
Reaper scoffed lightly. “They almost certainly are. But if they set foot in here they won’t step back out again.”  
“Uh, you ain’t exactly in top fighting condition, man,” Lucio pointed out.   
“If a hunter’s traps are good enough, he doesn’t need to be afraid of wolves,” Reaper said.  
Lucio thought about that. 

But he had another reason to want to go.   
The adrenaline that had him wired a while ago--how long, he wasn’t sure--had faded, leaving him feeling heavy and cold and tired. He didn’t want to think about it, but he was fighting off exhaustion as hard as he could, and he was losing. 

He wedged himself into the couch’s corner, telling himself he had an easy line to the door. His amp still had a 70% charge, and Reaper was too hurt for him to be seriously scared of the guy at the moment.   
And he had saved him, again. Lucio wondered what that meant.

 

~

Lucio started awake, his arm jostling against something cool and leathery.  
When he looked over, Reaper was sitting next to him, still. He’d elbowed the man’s coat, wadded up like a bolster pillow between them.

“You’re awake,” he said.  
“Yeah,” Lucio said. “Yeah, how long was I asleep?”  
“I have no idea what time we came in.”

Lucio gave him a flat, unimpressed look; Reaper turned his mask away, and muttered, “It’s 3:15 in the morning.”  
“You could have killed me...” Lucio said, wonderingly.  
Reaper only snorted and shook his head. “I don’t piss where I drink. You wouldn’t be any good to me dead.”  
“And I’m no good to my team if the Vishkar guys track me back there before I get a chance to even warn them!”

Now it was Reaper’s turn to give Lucio an unimpressed look. (Lucio WAS impressed by how expressive the other man could make an immobile mask, however.)  
“You’re not going to tell them,” he said. He was not asking a question.  
Lucio just huffed, annoyed, and stood up. 

Before he got outside, he turned off his amp’s lights. He jogged up one block, leisurely, then took a bunch of turns seemingly at random.   
Every now and then when he glanced at the shadows he would see the same face there--long, white skeletal mask, matte and bone-white, tinted with the orange glare of the streetlamps. 

When he was fifteen minutes away from the safehouse, he stopped seeing Reaper’s face in all the buildings’ shadows. 

~

When he got back--sneaking in through a side door and acting like it WASN’T 4:30 in the morning on a Tuesday--he was surprised to see Hanzo and McCree already in the kitchen. 

Both of them were in yukata--Hanzo’s, clearly, because the one McCree was wearing only came down to his calves. They both had wet hair and were drinking things out of mugs and whispering to each other. Lucio didn’t know if it was cute or weird that the yukata--both dark blue--had patterns of koi on them, or that only Hanzo was wearing an actual obi with his--McCree had tied his on with a brown and red plaid bathrobe belt.   
“ _There_ you are!” McCree said.

“Uh, hey,” Lucio said. He wanted to sidle towards the door, but Hanzo pinned him with a knowing look.  
And then _smiled_.  
“What’s their name?” McCree asked, his face lit up with excitement.  
Lucio looked absolutely floored for a second.   
“I--uh--what?”

“Aww, come on, you don’t need to act shy, kid, we’ve all snuck out to meet up with somebody at one time or another. Huh, pardner?” McCree elbowed Hanzo a little; the other man rolled his eyes and hid his mouth behind his cup, but his nose was crinkled in a   
way that told Lucio he was smiling anyway. 

The realization dawned of what they thought he’d been doing, and it felt like relief.  
He kept up the guilty act, though, fiddling with his hands a little.   
“Well, it--he--um,” he said. 

Before he had to make up a name, Hanzo elbowed McCree back. “Leave him in peace. No one likes to be interrogated about their...romantic lives.” So saying, he looked back at Lucio, his eyes sparkling. 

Lucio, face and ears burning, smiled back awkwardly, mumbled, “Uh, yeah, well--you guys, uh, go on an’ enjoy breakfast!”

Back in his room, he felt like everything was as surreal as a dream.   
As he stood in the shower scrubbing off, and then soaking and staring blank-eyed at the wall in front of him, part of him wondered when he was actually going to wake up for real.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Outtakes: When Lucio sneaks back in and runs into Hanzo and McCree in the kitchen, i originally wrote:
> 
> “Aww, come on, you don’t need to act shy, kid, we’ve all snuck out to meet up with somebody at one time or another. Huh, pardner?” McCree elbowed Hanzo a little; the other man rolled his eyes and hid his mouth behind his cup, but he still had the crinkled crows’ feet at the corners <(don’t give him crow’s feet, do something else. Hanzo is aging like a beautiful piece of sculpture, he doesn’t even know what wrinkles are)> that told Lucio he was smiling anyway.


	4. Chapter 4

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Warnings. Warnings given for the wrong reasons to the wrong people. Warnings no one had a chance to listen to.

It was two more days before the pieces clicked into place.  
Only Overwatch agents would even know HOW to equip or use Doomfist’s gauntlet; the only agents with high enough clearance to have been allowed to touch the thing were the security detail people that had escorted it to its holding place.

According to ALL the reporst he found, the ‘security team’ agents were all actually Blackwatch.  
Lucio scowled at his computer, drumming his fingertips on the desktop. There was still a piece missing.

He was fairly certain Reaper MUST have been an Overwatch, or possibly Blackwatch agent, at one point or another. The only question was, who WAS he originally? What was his NAME?  
For this, he knew he’d need to ask Athena to use her databases.  
He sat back in his chair, sighing and rubbing his forehead. 

~

As it turned out, there WAS more there, but he didn’t get a chance to investigate before something else happened. 

~  
He was in the main rec room, minding his own business, playing an old videogame called Audiosurf and trying not to stress about the Reaper Problem, when he heard the very distinctive sound of a pair of combat boots over the floor, accompanied by the rasp of a leather jacket.

For a masked vigilante who was suppossed to do a lot of covert operations, Morrison sure was LOUD, Lucio thought.  
He looked up from his laptop and smiled. “Hey, good afternoon!”

“Dos Santos.” the older man stopped, drew himself up to his full height, and stared down at him. “I’m going to just cut to the chase. You will NOT engage in any more solo operations, covert or otherwise, or you will be removed from this team,” Jack growled.

Lucio stared at him a long moment, then actually started to defend himself before aborting the thought halfway through. The dude sure did have a good talent for picking bad times to talk about important things.  
He wondered if Morrison was always going around and cornering agents like this, or if he was being paid a ‘special’ visit. 

“What I do when I’m not wearing an Overwatch uniform is my business,” he said coolly, trying not to let on that his hands were starting to sweat.  
Morrisson was an entire head taller than him, and had maybe seventy, maybe eighty more pounds on him, as well. Lucio didn’t want to see if he was one of those military hard-asses who believed corporal punishments were the go-to method of discipline for wayward troops. 

“This operation is bigger than you and your little vendetta against an overgrown real-estate company, and you will NOT jeopardize it!”  
“...Okay, okay. But, uh…thing is…this ‘operation’? It ain’t strictly legal. In any country. And I mean, okay, neither is corporate sabotage, but hey, you can’t catch a guy who’s a member of a non-existent justice task force. And if you can’t catch that guy, you can’t see what uniform he’s NOT wearing. You feel me?” he asked. He was deliberately keeping his tones light.

Morrison, however, was fuming, hands clenched behind his back hard enough that Lucio coul actually hear the leather of his gloves creaking.  
Lucio was starting to get annoyed. Who the hell just went around in their combat gear, all the time like that? He wanted to ask. 

“You are not to engage them again while we are stationed in this location. Do you UNDERSTAND?” Morrison asked. He was so close Lucio could smell him--aftershave and leather and that weird overheated kevlar smell that guys in body armor ended up with.  
Lucio nodded once. 

Morrison grunted once, then turned on his heel and moved away.

Lucio couldn’t just leave it alone, though. He piped up, “But hey, since we’re talking about vendettas and who’s allowed to go after who…it must be nice, having a whole team to sic on the guys who YOU want gone.” he added.

Morrison, who had stalked halfway out the doorway, rounded on him and was back in front of him in a second, loomking over him again.  
“You watch your mouth, KID,” he spat.  
“Hey, man, I’m just saying…” Lucio trailed off, shrugging elaborately. 

Advice from one of his more streetwise cousins snapped into his mind, sudden and unhelpful: if someone bigger than you ran up on you, the best thing to do was stick a pocket-knife into their belly so they’d double over. It’d even out the height difference. Then you could go for the eyes or nose or ears and get away easy.

Lucio didn’t have a switchblade, at the moment, but he halfway wished he did; the fear and awe he’d initially had for the older man had boiled off, leaving only a sour nervousness and bitterness. Of course he could dish it out but not take it back, Lucio thought.  
He didn’t say that. 

“You’re damn right I have a team. And a good one, too! And if YOU want to stay as a part of it, you’d better toe the line.” he growled.  
Lucio’s only response was a noncommittal noise and another half-shrug. The older man satisfied himself with that and strode away. 

Their little ‘chat’ just left Lucio wondering how much Morrison knew about what he was doing. Had he bugged the place? Would Winston and Athena know?

But those worries were shot down almost immediately: if he HAD bugged the place, there was no way he would have missed Reaper sneaking in. And Lucio kept his gear up well enough that he knew there was no way the older man could have tampered with any of that, whether it was to attach a manual tracker or install any spying software.  
He had to just believe that the man was observant and already suspicious of him, and leave it at that.  
Even if that thought WAS unpleasant, and he knew it was unfair. 

~

A few days later, they caught him when he was alone.  
He wasn’t initially alone; one minute he was walking down an aisle in a grocery store, the local big chain supermarket where it was easy to go in and blend in. He’d been telling Hana he was going to go see if they had any avocado-flavored ice cream, and then, two aisles down and within easy view of the rows of freezers along the back wall, he turned and bumped into a guy who was dressed like a security guard.

Before he could even say, “Sorry, my bad,” the guy had his hands zip-tied. Lucio got one good kick in, which did nothing, because under his ugly work-issued slacks, the guy was wearing some kind of rigid leg armor--and then when he tried to throw an elbow at the guy’s face and yell for help, the guy put him in a choke-hold. A second pair of hands pulled bag over his head, and then he was being dragged, mainly by the neck, but partly--and fuck those assholes--by the hair, down an aisle. 

A door opened and closed; they thrust him roughly down onto the floor, the person still holding him by the hair through the bag.  
“That’s him?”  
“It’s him. Confirmed.” 

Two guys. He was still squirming, trying to gauge how tight the zip-ties actually were, when soemone hit him with something across the arm. 

He yelled once in pain and lashed out with one foot; someone cursed, and someone else hit him, lower in the side. This time he rolled over, trying to curl into a ball, but someone stuck their knee in his back, flattening him into the floor. It took two more guys to hold his legs so they could zip-tie his ankles and knees.

He stopped fighting. There were at least three guys, he realized, and they weren’t store security and they definitely weren’t cops.  
Whoever they were, they wanted him alive, and he wondered if they were Vishkar guys under cover, local cops under cover,  
They hadn’t told him to stop resisting arrest. They hadn’t told him anything.  
Mind racing, he took an inventory of the situation, as best he could.

It would be a few minutes before Hana would miss him. McCree, who had had to bleach his hair an unflattering blond and shave his beard to avoid recognition, had driven them; he was waiting in the car. Hana was in the produce section, and when he’d left her she’d been appraising the napa cabbage display, carrying a basket with chili flakes and ginger and garlic cloves already in it. 

Something else occurred to him, with an even worsening sense of dread: what if these people were Talon or something, and had figured out who theywere and come to take them out? Were they in the store right now, convering on Hana, about to grab her, too? Were there armed guards in the parking lot about to corner McCree?

But this was struck down almost immediately; Talon were not known for taking prisoners, as far as he knew, and they also didn’t seem to know what stealth even was.  
Vishkar, on the other hand…

He heard a metal grate rattle up. More voices.  
“He’s still alive? He needs to be alive and uninjured. We have orders.”  
Someone shuffled their feet. “He kicked me pretty hard. We had to subdue…”  
“But you didn’t break anything, I hope. This was supposed to be simple. I hope you didn’t fuck it up.”  
“We’re not idiots.”  
Grumbling.

Someone grabbed him by the arm and jerked him upright, so he was kneeling, and a hand snatched at the top of his head and yanked the bag off.

He yelled again in pain--the guy had STILL had some of his hair in his hand, and at this point Lucio was pretty sure that wasn’t an accident--and when he opened his eyes again he saw one white guy in a polo shirt and the kind of ugly bermuda shorts that are only ever uniforms for truck drivers, for whatever reason. Behind him there was another white guy, dressed the same way in an offensively plain polo shirt and bermuda shorts. Both of them had some company logo on the shirts; Lucio didn’t get a good look at it. 

He was kneeling on the floor in the loading dock of the grocery store, on a bare concrete floor. There were two guys standing to either side of him, one of them holding the bag--and Lucio felt his stomach lurch a little--one of his ripped-out locs was dangling from the bag’s interior. He wondered if the cold, aching feeling on top of his head was his scalp bleeding. 

Both the guys holding him down were dressed like regular security guards--white shirts, fake badges, ugly pressed olive-drab slacks. The same kinds of shoes cops around the whole world wore, the ugly reinforced tactical soles giving away the deceptively over-shined uppers.  
His gaze traveled out over his surroundings again.

Even if his legs hadn’t been tied, there was no way out--there were crates and pallets of food everywhere, and the only way out seemed to be the big loading doors. Nearest the roll-up loading doors there were several dozen pallets of dog food, all still shrink-wrapped to the wooden pallet bases. 

A big hard-sided truck had been backed up to the doors, its own loading doors open. One of them was swung wide to block the view to outside; sunlight glowed brilliant yellow-white around the door.  
Lucio could hear road traffic, parking lot noises; he knew perfectly well that calling for help, no matter how loud he was, would be pointless.  
He clenched his teeth.

The white guy standing immediately in front of him looked at him, had the guys holding him pull up his sleeve and show him his frog tattoo, before finally seeming satisfied.  
Then they marched him to the truck, him barely protesting, before shoving him inside. They cuffed him to some cargo tethering rings, not speaking to him and barely looking at him.

A moment later, the guy on the phone made an impatient gesture--he heard, “--needs to be secured--” and then one of the guards, grunting and annoyed, came and pulled down a big cargo net that was anchored to the ceiling, and clipped it into place on some rings in the truck floor, one of which Lucio was tied to. He eyed Lucio the way people eyeballed large dogs whose behavior they weren’t sure of.  
If he thought he’d had a fighting chance, Lucio would have kicked at him, bitten him, anything. 

But the guy at least didn’t say anything. He secured the cargo net and then left, straightening his pants by yanking up on his overloaded toolbelt. 

Inside him the fear was surging up and down with the fury--they weren’t even going to speak to him, not directly; they weren’t even going to pretend to be real cops or read him his rights or anything.  
Maybe they weren’t even cops.

He considered making a racket in the truck, banging his elbows against the walls or kicking his feet.  
Then he remembered the loc hanging from the man’s hand, his blank remorseless face.  
The steel flashlight the other guys had all had, on their toolbelts.  
He swallowed, squirming. 

The only good thing, he decided, was that they at least hadn’t done what real cops would have done, and made the ties tight enough to cut off circulation.  
Maybe, he thought, with some wiggling he could get out of this. He knew how to snap out of zip-ties around his wrists, of course; he himself had taught probably hundreds of people exactly how. He also knew how to get them off with a paperclip, a safety pin, a toothpick, a bent staple, a hairpin, literally anything.

The truck was empty, except for some wadded-up shipping plastic and a few wads of used tape.  
Which didn’t matter; he knew he had at leat one bobby pin somewhere on him, if not tucked into his locs then in one of the cargo pockets of his shorts. All he had to do, he told himself, was get to the bobby pin, get the ties off, and get out. 

Get somewhere where he could contact the others, warn them, ask for help.  
He wondered if Hana was inside looking for him, if she’d make a scene when she realized he was gone.  
If they’d do anything to her to get her to shut up.  
His gut clenched hard.

And McCree, in the parking lot, waiting, oblivious. He knew they could just shoot him dead and turn him in to the police and STILL collect the reward on his head.  
He stopped his thought train before it could get any grimmer.  
The first step, he told himself, was to get out.

He heard footsteps up the ramp, and then what he saw made his stomach drop.  
They were bringing pallets of dog food bags back up the ramp, loading them into the truck. He watched, with wide, horrified eyes, as they bricked him in, stacking the pallets almost all the way to the truck’s ceiling. 

By the time the truck pulled off, they had filled it so much that Lucio could no longer see light over all the pallets of food. 

By the time they finally stopped, he’d come up with a dozen different escape strategies.  
He hoped at least a few of them would pan out.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Posting this kind of rough because i need to post SOMETHING. Will return later and clean it up.

**Author's Note:**

> i started writing this last year because i had a mental image that wouldn't leave me alone. i've been working on it on-and-off...
> 
> as always, i hope you enjoyed reading~


End file.
